Welcome to Me

Many years ago when there was a choice of Sony and a number of other brands to choose from for my electronic needs, I rarely chose Sony because of their proprietary issues. The only chargers and accessories that worked with Sony were other Sony products. This annoyed me so much that to this day, I do not buy Sony products.

Years later, Apple has done a very similar thing. Most, if not all, Apple products require Apple accessories. I must have an Apple charger to charge any Apple product. It seems that most people do not mind the proprietary issues with Apple. I use a few Apple products myself, but I do have a preference for other non-Apple items, as well, and I enjoy the fact that those other products use universal accessories to keep them running.

Apple was not always a proprietary company, however. Originally, the Apple II computer would allow the user to run software from just about anyone, anywhere. It was a clean slate. (Zittrain, pg. 2) With the advancement of third party software, the Apple II was a hot commodity.Read the rest of this entry »

Meetup.com is an awesome site that allows the user to easily find like-minded people in their area. The user signs up for an account, she types in the type of group she would like to find and a number of great opportunities populate the screen. She then takes a look at the groups that interest her, and off she goes. Meetup.com brings local people together to do things they enjoy.

Meetup.com claims to be “the world’s largest network of local groups.” It has 15.92 million members and 142,319 groups in 196 countries. A person can find just about anything she wants to do via Meetup.

Meetup’s mission is to “revitalize local community and help people around the world self-organize. Meetup believes that people can change their personal world, or the whole world, by organizing themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference.”

The Meetup mission statement ties directly in to an article I read by Lee Humphreys titled Mobile Social Networks and Urban Public Space. Simply put, this article is about how people use telecommunications to find each other in the local area and meet up to socialize.Read the rest of this entry »

In my house, the TV channel is usually glued to FOX News. It’s my husband’s favorite background noise. We do not watch much regular TV, but we do enjoy watching our favorite shows via DVDs. We’re always at least one season behind, which can be frustrating, but it’s always worth not having to watch the commercials. Neither of us enjoys commercials.

I recently read an article about the Nielsen ratings and learned that, “TV ratings don’t just measure how many people watch a TV show, they measure how many people watch the ads in TV shows.” (Engler, pg. 3) I wasn’t sure how the ratings worked, but I did not realize that Nielsen was monitoring the commercials and not the actual shows. I found this very interesting. Especially considering DVR and online viewing is so popular today.Read the rest of this entry »

I think Twitter is an extremely versatile social media tool that can bring people together to support a particular cause, but I think more times than not, that’s all Twitter will do. I think the only way it will cause people to create change is when that particular community is at a culminating point – it’s ready to explode – and people are ready to support the cause by physical involvement and movement.

In his article, Small Change, Why the Revolution Will Not be Tweeted, Malcolm Gladwell discusses how four black college students walked into a Woolworth’s on February 1, 1960, sat down in a designated ‘white’ area and would not leave until the store closed. This amazing group of young people started a revolution. Little did they know that the next day, the number of college supporters would grow. Each day thereafter, the crowd continued to grow, and the movement spread to other cities across the south. All this happened without social media – Twitter in particular.Read the rest of this entry »